Locked Down Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

Ups...

6. The Cathartic, Timely Subject Matter

Though a Hollywood movie set during a pandemic while the pandemic is still going on will understandably be a non-starter for some, the film's heart at least seems to be in the right place, and for many its attempt to capture the essence of life in lockdown will surely be cathartic.

The film opens with shots of London's empty streets and features numerous other signifiers which have defined the last year for so many of us: Zoom calls, no-contact food deliveries, round-the-clock news coverage, "The Rules," furlough, redundancies, and anxious trips to the shop.

Easy though it is to scoff at wealthy Hollywood actors playing "regular" folk in the middle of a pandemic, Knight's script at least understands the existential anguish that the virus has brought so many, where the temptation to glug down a few glasses of wine in the afternoon becomes enormously tempting.

If Songbird was an exploitative, trashy speculative take on where COVID-19 could take us, Locked Down at least foregrounds its humanity over everything else while refusing to engage in dangerous scaremongering.